Your daily dose of what’s trending in money-and-politics, including some tidbits from the latest filings to the Federal Election Commission:

RUDERMAN’S BIGGEST SUPPORTER: The Democratic primary race for Washington state’s 1st congressional district is getting messy. Just last week, a mailer was sent to homes across the district attacking front-runner Suzan DelBene, a former Microsoft executive. Yesterday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) complained the mailer tried to make DelBene look like Mitt Romney, and demanded the anonymous smears stop. DelBene’s opponent Laura Ruderman, a former Washington state legislator denied any knowledge of who was behind the attack.

Turns out it was Ruderman’s mother.

The mailings were funded by a newly-formed super PAC called Progress for Washington, which filed its first disclosure forms with the FEC yesterday afternoon. To date, the group has raised $115,000. Every dime of it from Ruderman’s mother, Margaret Rothschild, of Vashon. In a column Rothschild wrote for the Huffington Post in March, she said that while she’s wading through expensive and complex battles against cancer that is likely terminal, she would do what she could to help her daughter win a seat in Congress. To date, DelBene’s campaign has raised nearly five times as much as Ruderman’s. In a statement Sunday, Rothschild admitted she funded the group but said she did it to counter DelBene’s ability to self-fund her campaign.

The cost of the mailing isn’t listed in the super PAC’s filing, but another large expenditure, $75,544 for TV advertising targeting DelBene, is dated to start running tomorrow.

FAMILY TIES, CONTINUED: Continuing in the genre (admittedly narrow, but where else are you going to find this kind of thing?) of family ties revealed in quarterly super PAC filings, we noticed that a new Florida-based super PAC, American Sunrise, reported yesterday that it has collected $350,000 from just two donors. The only spending the organization has done so far comes to $54,000, disbursed to support Patrick Murphy, the 28-year old Democratic challenger to Republican fundraising powerhouse Rep. Allen West.

American Sunrise’s duo of donors are a South Florida businessman named Ibrahim Al-Rashid, who chipped in $100,000, and Patrick Murphy’s father — Thomas P. Murphy, Jr. — who offered up $250,000 of his own.

INDIANA VALUES: Last week we detailed how USA Super PAC, organized by Citizens United lawyer Jim Bopp, collected cash from some of the biggest names in anti-establishment conservative circles and used it support Richard Mourdock, the tea party challenger who unseated veteran Republican Sen. Richard Lugar. Yesterday, we learned that Lugar’s side was hustling just as hard, taking full advantage of the post-Citizens United (the 2010 Supreme Court decision, that is) system.

Indiana Values, a super PAC headed by a former Lugar aide, reported having raised $275,000 in the second quarter of this year, in the run up to the Indiana primary on May 8. There were just six donors — only one of whom was from Indiana. The single largest source of money was a group called Indiana Values, Inc., which appears to be a secretive, non-disclosing 501(c)(4) organization — the kind we have written about extensively in our Shadow Money Trail series — although no trace of the group’s filings with the IRS is publicly available. This secretive affiliate of the secretive super PAC gave $137,000. The only clue about who backs this new group is its address: 1401 K Street, Suite 600, Washington, D.C., which is the office of a lobbying firm, Policy Impact Communications, that seems to have a much-reduced portfolio since 2009. William H. Nixon, a former senior staff member on Capitol Hill, heads the firm.

In the race, Mourdock tried to paint Lugar as an Indiana-native-turned-Washington-insider, and if the pro-Lugar super PAC’s ties to a Washington lobbying firm weren’t enough to cement that narrative, here’s another factoid: The second-biggest donor to Indiana Values was Sam Fox, who with his wife gave the group $100,000. Fox, a Missouri businessman, is best known as a major donor and bundler for the George W. Bush campaign, and he helped bankroll the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth attacks on John Kerry in 2004. In 2006, Bush nominated Fox to serve as the ambassador to Belgium, using a recess appointment to push the posting through despite opposition from Congressional Democrats.

Russ joined the Center in March 2012 as the money-in-politics reporter. His duties include reporting for OpenSecrets Blog and assisting with press inquiries. Russ has a background in investigative journalism, having worked as a reporter for the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, and he spent five years as a newspaper reporter in New Hampshire. He has a degree in political science from Muhlenberg College and a M.A. in journalism and public affairs from American University.

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